BaL 6.01.18 - Ligeti recordings

[LeMartinPecheur]

A very cheap BaL for LMP! Not because I don't like the music but because I already have the Sony and Teldec boxes. (EA - shouldn't both of them now get a plug in your #1?).

Yet the programme was still a very useful prompt - I NEED TO REPLAY AN AWFUL LOT OF THESE DISCS!!! With hopes of redundancy this year, in this goes as Retirement Project #643A

[BBMmk2]

What was the choice of the Violin Concerto?

[Richard Barrett]

What was the choice of the Violin Concerto?

My choice would be Saschko Gawriloff (for whom it was written and who composed the cadenza, although to tell the truth this is the least interesting part of the piece) and Boulez. But if I were buying a CD for someone else to show them what an interesting composer Ligeti was, it would be the one with Benjamin Schmid and Hannu Lintu, combined with Atmosphères, Lontano and San Francisco Polyphony. Boulez's coupling of the Concertos for cello and piano isn't anything like as attractive IMO.

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, enthusiastically second that Ondine/Lintu release, and this 24/96 2016 BIS album (which I think you mentioned on another thread recently)...

[ardcarp]

Sony had a Ligeti Edition around 20 years ago.

Yes, I have a couple, No 3 Piano Music and No 5 Mechanical Music*. I give the latter a spin quite often as it never fails to bring a smile to my face. It has transcriptions for player piano and for barrel organ. Hungarian Rock is a favourite track. The only choral piece I've ever attempted to sing was Lux Aeterna. (I seem to remember holding a top A for several very slow bars.) The overall effect is terrific, but IMO it's a mistake to perform it in anything but a very resonant acoustic.

I enjoyed today's programme, and as a resume of his entire life and work, it was well done, I thought.

*Bryn wrote:

I very much doubt that I will be purchasing any works by this composer as a result of the BaL survey.

Try Sony CD 5 if it's still available. It might convert you!

http://naxosdirect.com/items/gyorgy-ligeti-edition-vol.-5-267950

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

(EA - shouldn't both of them now get a plug in your #1?).

I've now added all the recommendations on the Radio 3 website.

[Bryn]

Re. #35. I did fairly quickly make it clear that I already have something of a superfluity of Ligeti recordings (see #15). Among the many discs are both the Sony and the Teldec sets, the original and revised versions of Le Grand Macarbre on CD, plus the Blu-ray of the La Fura dels Baus production as staged in Barcelona. Then there is the plethora of recordings of radio broadcasts. I do not share Richard B's dim view of Ligeti's later works, though in the case of Le Grand Macarbre, the composer was pretty critical of it himself, hence the revisions.

[BBMmk2]

Richard Barrett and JLW. Many thanks indeed. I will always remember a Prom concert, which imo, was a very good performance of the Violin Concerto, with Tasmin Little, the Berliners and Rattle. I do hope Little will record this on chandos, say with the BBCSSO and Sir Andrew Davis, perhaps.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I've now added all the recommendations on the Radio 3 website.

Many thanks EA!

Can I just plug a disc that didn't get a mention? https://www.amazon.co.uk/African-Rhy...=ligeti+aimard

It's the perfect way to complete your collection of Aimard Ligeti piano etudes if you already have his Sony disc, in their box-set or free-standing, and get a big slice of the traditional African music that inspired him (Ligeti)/them.

[OK, there are also two Steve Reich tracks, but they shouldn't prove fatal in these small doses]

[teamsaint]

Many thanks EA!

Can I just plug a disc that didn't get a mention? https://www.amazon.co.uk/African-Rhy...=ligeti+aimard

It's the perfect way to complete your collection of Aimard Ligeti piano etudes if you already have his Sony disc, in their box-set or free-standing, and get a big slice of the traditional African music that inspired him (Ligeti)/them.

[OK, there are also two Steve Reich tracks, but they shouldn't prove fatal in these small doses]

Worth the used price for the cover alone. very tempted.

( But a ****** to find again if you put it down on the parquet floor......)

[Richard Barrett]

( But a ****** to find again if you put it down on the parquet floor......)

That's an interesting idea for a CD programme to be sure. But, LMP, isn't there a danger that Ligeti's rhythms (not to mention Reich's) might seem a bit contrived next to the "originals"?

[LeMartinPecheur]

That's an interesting idea for a CD programme to be sure. But, LMP, isn't there a danger that Ligeti's rhythms (not to mention Reich's) might seem a bit contrived next to the "originals"?

It doesn't seem so to me, but then I guess I'm (slightly) more familiar with Ligeti's "contrivances" than with African music!

[Richard Barrett]

It doesn't seem so to me, but then I guess I'm (slightly) more familiar with Ligeti's "contrivances" than with African music!

I don't know Ligeti's etudes at all well, and so far I haven't been very convinced by them, apart from the first one which I think is brilliant, but I really ought to get to know them better.

[Bryn]

I don't know Ligeti's etudes at all well, and so far I haven't been very convinced by them, apart from the first one which I think is brilliant, but I really ought to get to know them better.

For numbers 1 to 13 you could do a lot worse than listen to Jeremy Denk's CD which has Beethoven's Op. 132 as a companion piece. Book 3 of the Études is missing, as is the Nancarrow inspired number 14, the final piece in Book 2.

[Richard Barrett]

For numbers 1 to 13 you could do a lot worse than listen to Jeremy Denk's CD which has Beethoven's Op. 132 as a companion piece. Book 3 of the Études is missing, as is the Nancarrow inspired number 14, the final piece in Book 2.

Yesterday I listened through the Ullén set. I think the problem I have with these etudes is similar to the problem I have with almost every set of piano etudes I can think of: after a few precisely-imagined studies whose "topic" is clear and well-defined, a certain sameness sets in, as if there's some kind of compulsion (or commission!) to continue the series beyond the sense of necessity with which it kicked off.

(On a personal note: in my spare time over recent weeks, I've been intermittently working on what I suppose is a series of studies, not for piano but exploring certain electronic sound-generation techniques, with no particular end in mind apart from, well, study. Having reached the tenth such "piece" it became abundantly clear that they were beginning to indeed take on the aforementioned kind of "sameness", which I took as a sign that I'd found a starting point for a "real" piece whose identity would be centred around this recurrent sound-form-character.)

It strikes me that many of Ligeti's post-Grand Macabre works (and maybe also the opera itself) also have the character of a series of studies, something that already begins with the two-piano pieces.